Finches and Starlings

I saw birds with bright red heads in my backyard – are they young cardinals? No, Michelle taught me, they are finches! This one is a male house finch. A female is brown and has stripes.

Here are two finches sitting in my backyard tree. Is the one on the top right a female?

Here is a finch eating sunflower seeds from our bird feeder.

Whoa! I caught him in flight as he leaves the bird feeder.

Another treat, this one just after dawn last week, was I heard a huge amount of bird noise outside. I rushed out with my camera and captured a bit of the party. Many black, noisy starlings were visiting our block.

A friend wrote: “Around 5:30 pm, I saw enormous numbers here on the south side of town. It took about 10 minutes for them all to pass by. I am not exaggerating. It was only a really thick, dense black cloud of them for the first few minutes, but they kept coming for a while after that. And, I agree, they were very noisy. I could still hear them for a while after they were out of sight.”

Yes Leora..that is the female and the male may take a seed and ‘feed’ her with it as part of pair bonding and breeding..they are very sweet.. I will add you to NN when I get the post done..or started..LOL…Michelle

Nice to see the house finches at your feeders, They seem to be missing in my yard this year. Wow, can you imagine if all those starling found your feeders at the same time. They are piggies. Glad to see they all moved on. Great post and photos.

Hi Leora,
I was happy to see one house finch last summer. I hope more come but one is a treat to see.
I was talking to my daughter yesterday and about the birds singing and she mentioned birds in a tree that woke her up. I suggested starlings and she said she just wanted them to be quiet. 🙂

We used to have house finches at our feeders when we lived in Oregon and I love them. Every time we put out suet we got flocks of starlings (which we didn’t want) so we had to stop using suet cakes. Enjoyed the pictures of them though!